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Category: Photography

I’ve always been somewhat of a purist where photography is concerned. I’m not a fan of heavy editing, and I’m particularly wary of applying any automated changes made by some random algorithm to my carefully planned out shots.

Call it pride, call it being a dinosaur, hell call it stupidity, or combine all three – but as a result I never really shot anything on my phone other than “memory” photos.

Most phone cameras are incredibly limiting. Even when you get something with an above-average sensor, the lens is so basic that you can hardly control any aspect of your photography. There are exceptions, granted, but they’re usually compromises, either in terms of size or in terms of software. I’m not prepared to lunge around a camera with a phone stuck to its back on a daily basis, and I’m not quite ready to go back to Symbian OS.

And so I was left with a decision. I could either just ignore mobile phone photography and diss it or I could try my hand at it. And, given the old adage in photography is that the best camera in the world is the one you have with you at the time, I decided to bite the bullet and try my hand at being more creative with my phone’s camera.

Based on the recommendation of a friend, I started off where everybody else seems to dip their toes in: Instagram. Now whereas I was slightly wary of mobile photography, I was actively anti-Instagram for quite a few reasons.

First of all it took ages to come over to Android, and when it did iPhone users felt betrayed. Seriously? Next there was the issue of Facebook buying them out at a time when Facebook was trying to claim it owned the rights to all your life and, finally Instagram itself was claiming it owns the rights to your photos (and thoughts). Thankfully this was sorted out and I was finally ripe for the picking.

I started looking for a few instagrammers, first the ones I already knew and followed on other social media (including my biggest inspiration in mobile photography, Michelle Robinson). Then I tried looking through the most popular photos as suggested by Instagram itself and was pretty disappointed. Most of the popular instagrammers are either famous people who use it to document their lives and are therefore stalked my many (I even chose to stalk a few myself) or hot chicks who take suggestive self-shots in the mirror (erm, I followed a couple of these too).

But the point is that very few people on Instagram are there for the photography. The ones who are more interested in aesthetic qualities of photography are few and far between, and finding them usually proves to be quite a challenge.

As with everything else, I guess it all boils down to whatever floats your boat. If you’re after proper mobile photography then you’ll outgrow Instagram’s severe limitations pretty quickly. There is only so much you can do to fix a photo with a retro filter. And applying funky filters will never help you out with the basics of photography such as lighting and composition.

If you do have the basics right and are ready to accept the limitations of the medium, then I think there is a lot of scope for mobile phone photography. Until we get proper lenses and decent sensors I think we shall have to base most of our skills on post-processing, but till then I believe that there is a lot of fun to be had and beautiful photos to be taken.

I might have joined the party late, but I intend to make the best of it now.

P.S. I post all my mobile phone photography on Instagram, even though you can catch a few on Facebook from time to time.

I love photography. I am never far from a camera, and never quit looking for pictures. Sometimes I realize that whenever I’m out and about I automatically look for photos, no matter whether I am out shooting or not.

However recently I have been taking my camera out with me less in everyday life, and reserving my photography to specific times when I leave the house specifically to take photos.

Social media has most of us living in fear of losing the moment. We feel compelled to document our life in snapshots. In slices of reality that can decorate our Facebook Timeline.

In the ’60s Ray Davies (of the Kinks) sang that “people take pictures of the Summer, just to prove that it really existed”, but what would he sing now? Even if you don’t take your camera out with you, someone is always likely to have a smartphone which incorporates a camera good enough to produce magazine-quality prints. And they take it out. And we all need to stop until they get the right shot.

There is nothing wrong in wanting to keep photographic evidence of an event, but if we obsess over it too much, we give too much care and attention to the photo rather than actually living the experience.

I go about it by reaching a compromise of sorts. First of all I have set up specific times to go out shooting. When I’m traveling I will spend some quality time shooting exclusively, but then I will also leave the hotel without my camera (OK, I take my baby camera just in case) to simply absorb the place. Looking for a photo has its advantages, but in the process of looking for the perfect picture you lose touch of what’s going on around you.

At the end of the day it boils down to a simple choice. Do you want to spend the precious time we’re given living your life for yourself or do you intend to document it minutely to share with the rest of the world? If you’re playing with your kids in the park – what is more important, having 200 photos of them playing or actually playing with them? If you’re out drinking with friends, what do you want – memories of yourself enjoying it or spending the next morning ruing that you don’t have enough to come up with a Facebook album of the night out?

So what would I have you do? Ditch the camera, stop taking photos of what goes on in your life? Nope, that would hardly be practical. Set time aside for photos. The last time I went to a concert I shot a couple of frames of the artist, shot some video footage for posterity and then enjoyed the concert in its entirety. If I want more good photos or a full video I can always find some by rummaging around on the Internet. If I want to take good music photography I won’t do it at the concert of a band I loved.

Try it – spend less time thinking about how you’re going to preserve and share the memory and spend the rest of your time living your life as if you did not need evidence of the fun you had. As if you did not have to prove that the Summer really existed. I might be a bit extreme in this belief – I did not even want a photographer at my wedding.

And if you want to convince your friends you can have a good time on a night out, then take them out with you the next time you hit town. And when you’re standing in front of a stunning sunset, take your hands off the camera and use them to hold your better half’s hand. Breathe in and savour the moment through your own eyes, not through a lens.

I spotted this windmill in the middle of a field while on a day-trip to Gozo last week. I’m not a big fan of heavy editing to give pictures a retro look (I know I do it, but not too often). This one just begged for it – I felt that as it is it could have been a shot taken somewhere out in the Wild West in the US some time in the ’60s.

P.S. Yes – I know, I’m lagging behind in posting my daily updates. I have been incredibly busy lately, and have been finding it very hard to cope with everything. What’s keeping me going is the fact that I know that most of the daily material is being created – I’m just not finding the time to edit and post it.

I have an excel sheet with all the photos I’m meant to upload and articles I need to link to and it does not look as depressing as the state of this blog

Remember the Filigree shop from in the Crafts Village from yesterday? The rest of the crafts-people work from Nissen huts that were left over from the time when this area was a British military base with an airport.

The sun was going down and the shadows were creating lovely patterns on the corrugated metal of the huts. Even if the photo feels static I think that it works as a true representation of the area. Unfortunately not all subjects are as interesting and exciting as we would like them to be, but some (like this one) still deserve to be documented.

Visited the Crafts Village in Ta Qali (Malta,) recently and took a few shots in the area. The place is usually bustling with activity most of the day because tourists flock to it to buy gold, glass-ware and filigree at rock-bottom prices. After 5pm, however, it becomes a ghost town.

It offers many photographic opportunities because the crafts-people all work from huts which are very derelict. There has been a renovation project in the pipe-line for over ten years but nothing has ever materialized. In the meantime no one spends money on making their place look ice just in case the renovation project suddenly becomes important once again.

One of these days I aim to re-visit when the shops are open. Shooting the artists at work would be another lovely opportunity.

The shot has no special techniques. I simply reduced its saturation (colour levels) significantly in post-processing to make the place seem even more desolate.

An experiment in extremely shallow depth of field. These are miniature clay snakes that were being prepared for a crafts lesson. Offhand I can calculate a depth of field of a couple of centimetres (around an inch at best). To achieve this I went in close, zoomed in as much as possible and opened the aperture as wide as I could.